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April, 2010:

Volunteering and raising money for Camp Sunshine

Apr 8th, 2010
by ChuckPapaG.

The work Camp Sunshine (www.mycampsunshine.com) does for children with cancer and their families is simply the stuff miracles are made from. It’s not often we can contribute to a miracle, and as many of you know, for the last eight years, my good friend Steve Brown, who has volunteered for over 20 years, and I, give a week of our time to be camp activity counselors teaching Karate to the 7-12 year old campers.  For the last couple of years we expanded the program to include two more instructors, Tara and Victor, and the kids just love it. 

It is one of the most treasured and important things I do each year, and the motivation behind this (now annual) e-mail.  Those of you who know me well can attest I am generally not prone to bouts of sentimentality for anything other than my own kids, except when it comes to our campers; Camp Sunshine deserves that for many reasons.  Not only is it an organization run by some of the best people I know, and it is a charity worthy of a special place in our hearts; it also has a special meaning for me because of the relationships I have built with the kids, even some who are no longer with us, over the years.  Being part of the “Karate Crew” and spending a week at Camp with children that are undergoing treatment, or have survived cancer, and still come to Karate practice and give it their best is a very humbling experience that places the importance of many things I deal with on a daily basis in the right perspective.

Unfortunately, volunteering time – emotionally rewarding and contributory as it might be – is only half the job of those who support Camp Sunshine.  As with every operation, until there is a cure, Camp Sunshine must raise money every year to support activities for the children and their families.  Tugging at your heart strings to help us raise money is the real purpose for this e-mail. 

Raising money, pays for children to go to summer camp and spend a week in an environment where living with cancer is not the exception, but rather the shared experience.  This is an environment where children with cancer can be just kids, amongst other kids like them, enjoying their summer. 

There are many events put together by the many friends of Camp Sunshine.  For those of you that don’t know about those events, or cannot participate, I humbly ask you to help Steve and me raise money during our participation in the  Keencheefoonee Road Race.  The race is one of the major fund-raising events for Camp Sunshine and it is driven entirely by the camp volunteers.  This is the most amazing group of people I have ever met in all my travels around the world.  Even though they volunteer their time, each year on the Tuesday morning of camp, before the campers awake, they start their day with a 5k run , or – as is the case of old fogies like Steve and me – walk, on the famous road to raise money. 

I hope you can find it in your heart, and in your wallet, to make an online donation to Camp Sunshine through the Online Donation link ( http://mycampsunshine.kintera.org/faf/r.asp?t=4&i=344806&u=344806-289243289 ) before June 18th (or to send me a check made out to Camp Sunshine).

Please indicate you are supporting the Karate Crew and the Keencheefoonee Road Race.  For your tax records, their EIN number is 58-1872217.

And if you are interested in volunteering for Camp and want to know what it feels like to be a part of such a great group, please call me anytime.

Relentlessly Objective Reality (Part 2 of 3)

Apr 6th, 2010
by ChuckPapaG.

The Cognitive Dissonance worm-hole

Those who listen to National Public Radio, know the Lake Wobegone motto that “all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average."  In a Cognitive Dissonance Environment certain beliefs exist that are so ingrained in the company’s culture that they force people to collect data supporting them, but ignore data not consistent with those beliefs.  Over the years I have seen slogans and buzzwords become embedded in the company’s folklore, migrate to becoming consistently held beliefs, and eventually becoming sacred beliefs that could not be challenged.  When things go wrong, or not as planned, teams assess reality as it is defined by those credos, and transport themselves to the Lake Woebegone Universe.  They will address all other aspects of the company, but ignore any data indicating the problem may be because of one of those long held beliefs. 

This was a lesson I learned after an investor group asked us to assess the reasons for the declining revenue of a manufacturing company in their portfolio.  The company founder, started the company thirty years earlier based on the core belief that engineering excellence was the key to success.  He hired “the best and the brightest” and the company prided itself on its engineering prowess.  Every facility was adorned with engineering award plaques earned in the early years of the company’s existence and engineering had a special seat at the table.  So when sales declined, an internal team spent six months analyzing data to understand the reasons.  High prices, and the lack of an advertising program were identified as reasons and the team launched projects in both area to address them.  Alas, that did not generate any meaningful results.  By not questioning the “best and the brightest engineers”, they missed the one major contributing factor to the declining sales.  The market place viewed the latest products from the company as shoddily built and poorly engineered.  The team failed to recognize that in reality, the founder was no longer involved in engineering and had not been in fifteen years despite the rousing speeches on the subject.  And to make things worse, the engineers who designed the original product had been retiring for the last ten years, and the company could not hire the “best and the brightest” based on its past glory because competitors paid much higher salaries.  Even questioning the role of engineering was sacrilege for so many years that presenting our assessment was an extremely tough day for all involved.  But, after the company traveled back from Lake Wobegone to the Relentlessly Objective Reality universe, it hired a new director of engineering, re-structured its campus-recruiting and compensation package, and bought a small engineering firm to jump start development of the next generation of products.